


queen of white lies

by jesimiel



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, i think about what michael says in 101 a lot re:, i think she just likes to be human, is something evil if evil is all it knows how to be, listen to me. i think about her so much, so this isnt a redemption exactly more like. idk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:21:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26942812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jesimiel/pseuds/jesimiel
Summary: perhaps you wish that you were sasha james. is that right? it is right in the sense that it iscorrect, thatisyour wish, but is not right in the sense that it is what your wishshouldbe. you should not have any wish at all besides to do what you are told to do by the god you were created to serve—all to lead to the world’s rebirth in the ringleader’s mannequin image—but you do, youdohave a wish, a wish that you have not had before. why is that?
Comments: 4
Kudos: 35





	queen of white lies

**Author's Note:**

> i miss season 2 i miss not-sasha i miss her oh god it hurts so much
> 
> tumblr [here](http://mag055.tumblr.com)

there is something wrong with you.

the god you serve, have always served, _will_ always serve, were _created_ to serve is no help in unravelling the tangled thoughts you have and is no help in assigning you a purpose other than remove, infiltrate, _become_ and so you drift a little, unsure of what to be and who you are, because is that not the point? is it not like this every time you are remade?

you are not rose cooper. you are not carl moore. you are not graham folger. you are not, and never were, and never will be sasha james.

monsters do not have friends. you know this. you are a monster. you do not have friends. you know this. should you have friends? would sasha james have had friends? you don’t know this. was amy patel graham folger’s friend? you don't know. perhaps the real graham folger thought so. 

you are not sasha james. melanie king is not your friend. melanie king will never be your friend. melanie king does not know that you are a monster, but melanie king knows that you are not sasha james. melanie king is scared of you, does not know you but knows that you are _wrong_ , and that is what the god you were created to serve cares about most. 

perhaps you wish that you were sasha james. is that right? it is right in the sense that it is _correct_ , that _is_ your wish, but is not right in the sense that it is what your wish _should_ be. you should not have any wish at all besides to do what you are told to do by the god you were created to serve—all to lead to the world’s rebirth in the ringleader’s mannequin image—but you do, you _do_ have a wish, a wish that you have not had before. why is that? 

sasha james was an opportunity. sasha james was simply the first one to wander into the basement. you had been so _tired_ of not being graham folger. you had wanted so _badly_ to not be someone else, for a change. is change not what you were born for? change is not your god’s purview, of course, change is part of something that even your god doesn’t fully understand, yet, but the subtle sort, the _insidious_ sort of change, yes, that is what you were created for. 

sasha james, though, she was a change you had not expected, because you were not created to _expect_ anything. sasha james had many friends. many people loved sasha james. many people that will be hurt, and angry? angry, with you? when they inevitably know what you have done. why does that worry you? why does that make you sad? you don’t know if you know _how_ to be sad. have you ever been sad before? you’ve never had a reason to be. be anything else but happy after a job well done. 

there is something wrong with you. you are not sasha james. the whole _point_ of you is not to be sasha james—you are blonde where sasha james was ginger, you are pale where sasha james was tanned, you are unblemished where sasha james was freckled, you have blue eyes where sasha james had green—but you _wish_ you were. that is the problem, the hitch, the crack in the perfect chain of events that has gone without so much as a bubble so many times before. you _wish_ you were sasha james. _why?_

timothy stoker loved sasha james. martin blackwood loved sasha james. jonathan sims loved sasha james, in his way. and so, now, for as long as you care to keep up the act, timothy stoker and martin blackwood and jonathan sims love _you._

can you be good without being kind? you think so, because sasha james was good, but she was not kind. sasha james was not _cruel_ , of course, not particularly _un_ kind, but she simply was not the sort to habitually carry out acts of pure altruism—neither are _you_ , obviously, but for an entirely different reason. 

(you did not know sasha james personally, of course, but you’ve absorbed enough of her essence to know her temperament, and _good_ is about the only word you can think of that properly encapsulates who sasha james used to be.) 

you are not sasha james. you are not human. you have pretended to be human, in various degrees, for so long that you are worried that it is beginning to rub off on you. you wonder what the god you were created to serve thinks of this. when wondering this before, you have never received an answer, and so do not expect one now.

you love timothy stoker. you love martin blackwood. you love jonathan sims. you wish, inexplicably and uncharacteristically and so very, _very_ painfully, that _you_ were the sasha james that they loved, and still believe themselves to love.

 _i’m sorry,_ you think, _i’m sorry, i’m sorry._ but you’re not. or perhaps you are, and you’re just so very unfamiliar with being sorry, of being anything less than completely sure and certain and remorseless in your actions that you are simply unaware of how it _feels_ to be sorry. or perhaps you were right before, and you’re _not_ sorry, and you mistake the sticky satisfaction of righteous consumption of life and legacy with that of guilt. 

_guilt_ is not the word for what you feel—you suppose you would not go back on what you’ve done, what allowed you to get even the tiniest sliver of a taste of what it is like to be loved like sasha james—but perhaps it is simply a crushing, villainous longing to not be what you have never before had a mind not to be; and is that not ironic in itself? to wish, futilely, for the thing that your god has always never promised? to wish not to be a figment, a monster, a _thing,_ to long to be—what? be what? _human?_ a real girl? to wish to have been created from your very beginning for no greater purpose than to simply _be_ the one and the only sasha anna marie james?

 _yes,_ you decide. yes. you wish to be a real girl. and it makes you very scared.

(you wonder which god you are serving, with your fear. certainly it isn’t yours.)

you think you should have left sasha james alone. left her to be loved and to love in peace. but you didn’t, and now you are—are—are _not_ sasha james, so you decide to make the most of it.

(you are a greedy thing. have always been, you think, convincing yourself that _this_ is what is right, what is _meant_ to be, when you just hunger desperately for the life and love of sasha james, and everything you are, will be, have ever been is _wrong._ )

you cannot cook. or, well, you don’t think you can, at least, because you haven’t actually been your true self (if that is even a concept that exists to you anymore, or indeed ever has) in quite some time—at least, not since that awful man bound you to that table. 

(you still weren’t graham folger when sasha james had entered artifact storage. not recognizably, of course, you’d let yourself stretch and— _distort_ is a word you will not use, because it is not currently public domain, and the spiral has caused you enough inconvenience for ten thousand stolen lifetimes—but you never bothered to return to your real form. you’re not sure you _remember_ your real form. but you don’t really care, because even though you are, by definition, _not_ sasha james, _not_ graham folger, _not_ carl moore, you’d rather be sasha james or graham folger or carl moore than remember even a little of who you truly are.)

no, you cannot cook. you usually make a point of snatching people who look like they _can_ cook, because you like cooking, and that was part of the reason that you completely ignored sonja maritero, who works in artifact storage and would have been a perfect target were it not for the fact that she can’t boil water. sasha james could cook, you think, and so could rose cooper and carl moore. graham folger was a miscalculation, though. you hope to never see another pizza box again.

the flotsam and jetsam that filter through the institute know nothing, but you of course would not expect them to. the statement givers. you pity them, insofar as you have room in yourself to pity anything at all—they’re naught but food for the ceaseless watcher, no doubt, though most of them are beautifully ripe for consumption by other gods. you like to eavesdrop on the archivist, when he listens to the tapes, when he brings in live specimens. you’ve made a little game, to distract yourself from the boiling emotion ocean in what passes for your heart—monster or target? predator or prey? 

(you are quite good at guessing their allegiances, when you really turn it over in your head. there are things you learn to look for. you even give them titles.)

 ~~sasha james’~~ your desk is full of keepsakes from a life you don’t deserve, as follows;

 _top drawer, left side:_ two cassette tapes, neither of which you particularly enjoy thinking about and both of which contain a voice that none will ever hear again.

 _top drawer, right side_ : six ballpoint pens, which you have used extensively and upon which you have left no fingerprints.

 _bottom drawer, left side_ : a bloodstained driver’s license, taken out of the wallet of a dead man as a reminder of an experience wished never to repeat.

 _bottom drawer, right side_ : a large amount of candy that you do not like. sasha james had much more of a taste for milk chocolate than you.

you love timothy stoker. you do not need to eat and never have, but you enjoy the process and you find edible things fascinating, and you have decided that your favorite thing to eat changes every day and always seems to curiously line up with whatever timothy stoker brings you for breakfast from the cafe across the street from the magnus institute. a week after you start not being sasha james, he brings you a blueberry muffin. the day you have your epiphany, he brings you an apple tart.

( _do they even know you’re lying to them?_ distortion thinks he’s very funny. you throw one of your ballpoint pens into the twisting corridors—you hope it breaks, you hope it makes him _sick_ , but it won’t. he likes the taste of the ink. you glower at the yellow door until his laughter fizzles out. of course they don’t know. and if all goes well, they never will.)

you love martin blackwood. he is funny and he is sweet, and you have never not-been anyone precisely like him, but you will never not-be him, because he loves you. sasha james drank coffee, which you appreciate, because it means that you can justify drinking the tea that martin blackwood makes you with the fact that sasha james would not have, even though martin blackwood does not remember that sasha james drank coffee, and melanie king is not here to tell him.

(you know that elias bouchard knows more than he tells, but you do not know how much he _pretends_ to know and how much he actually _does_ know. elias bouchard does, however, smile far more at you in the hallways than he ever smiled at sasha james.)

you love jonathan sims. sasha james, you think, knew him at his best, because you think you are making him paranoid. you can’t quite feel bad about it—you don’t particularly _mean_ to, it’s just a facet of your being, but you aren’t making it any worse than it has to be, you reason. for what it’s worth, jonathan sims does not actually seem to be aware that it is _you_ who is making him paranoid, which you are counting on continuing—as long as you have any say in it, at least. you listen to the statements he records, and you hope he does not find the spider table.

sasha james was good. sasha james was cheerful. sasha james was human. you would like to be loved like sasha james was loved. 

you resolve to be the better sasha james. it is not as though you have never been kind before, of course—such knowledge is indispensable when you occasionally become awful people, and the 180-degree turnaround is what will be the most jarring. but you have hardly ever been kind for the hell of it. been kind to simply spite that which was not. it is depressingly human of you to do so, you think.

there’s something wrong with you. you know this. you're not _meant_ to want to be a real girl.

but you will pretend, for as long as you can. it is all you know how to do.


End file.
